Excursions

Two farmers will take us on a walk and share their story. The third initiative, King of the Meadows, which is also located in Friesland, is a collective of citizens, farmers, scientists and artists. Over the past few decades, almost all meadowlands in The Netherlands have been changed into intensively managed agricultural lands, with tremendous negative consequences for the plant and animal species that use this habitat. King of the Meadows aims to halt this decline by implementing a broadly shared action plan, which entails reconnecting people and landscape. During the excursion it will be demonstrated how this can be achieved through art.

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We will continue our tour with a walk past the stream valley, heathlands, and forests near Remkum. This walk will be guided by Martin Woestenburg, a landscape and commons-researcher who studies the relationship between landscape and food. He will tell us about a new set of initiatives in the Netherlands, called Heathland Farms. The Heathland Farm is an innovative concept for organizing circular economies, based on the traditional heathland agriculture which links heath as outfields to arable land and meadows as infield.

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During the excursion we will learn how these three gardens are managed, what impact they have on the people and neighborhoods involved, and how people are encouraged to take part in the management of these gardens.

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In Zuidwolde, lastly, we will see how villagers and companies work together to collectively manage the surrounding landscape, maintaining and improving its natural and historical values.

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The cooperative, with a total of 600 members, pursued its goals by managing a local pub and town center, and by building 26 new houses to stimulate younger families to stay in the villages. They are currently working on turning an empty church into a public village school. The last visit will be to Heerenboeren - a cooperative of citizens that collectively run a small-scale mixed farm that provides the members with fairly and locally produced vegetables, fruit and meat. A farmer has been appointed for the daily work on the farm. We will be guided around the farm by Geert van der Veer, founder and chairman of Heerenboeren. He will tell us about their plans to encourage the development of dozens of similar cooperative farms by 2026.

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The houses are mostly self-supporting, with collective purification systems both for waste and drinking water, passive heating by the sun and thermal mass, and additional heating by means of efficient wood stoves. The initiators will explain the decision-making model the community uses to balance individual and collective interests. The third initiative we will visit is set in Flevoland, a province that was reclaimed from the sea 60 years ago. On the former sea bed, a new ecological estate called Roggebotstaete was established in 2012. Roggebotstaete developed into a natural and sustainable food producing area, where respect for nature and community are base values. It encompasses 52 hectares of forests, grasslands and water reservoirs on which rare species of cows, sheep and pigs roam.

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We will conclude our trip with a visit to a wastewater treatment plant which is currently being renovated, where we will be informed about the newest water purification technologies (Nereda).

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How were the irrigation systems governed and what was their impact on the rural landscape? What are the possibilities for creating new water management communities?

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The local government, businesses, education centers, and scientists are active partners in this initiative, but the desires and wishes of the neighborhood’s residents forms the basis of this sustainable business case.

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In the afternoon we will visit Skillcity - a knowledge common in which teachers jointly own the course material they developed. In the South of Rotterdam, one of the poorest areas in the country, primary school children are taught gardening, cooking, aikido or judo, technology and programming, and philosophy on a weekly basis. We will visit one of Skillcity's school gardens with a kitchen and a canteen, where Aetzel Griffioen, philosophy teacher and chief of Skillcity, will introduce the activities in more detail.

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While the initiative is currently led by two paid employees, the final goal is collective ownership by the residents to create a sustainable future. Third, we will visit ‘De Voorkamer’ [‘The Living Room’], an initiative that facilitates and stimulates the talents of people living in a refugee center and status holders. Throughout their stay, residents have no real work opportunity; ‘De Voorkamer’ allows them to demonstrate their skills, collaborate with local professionals, and meet locals.

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We will learn about the decisions and dilemmas the farmers faced, as well as the solutions they have designed to deal with them. Our final stop will be at a recently established initiative in Doesburg. In this initiative, the inhabitants of Doesburg aim to protect the former arable fields by reintroducing authentic local crops and old ways of farming.

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Our lunch will be provided by a new citizen initiative called ‘taste before you waste’, an initiative that tries to draw public attention to the waste of food.

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They are achieving this by setting up small projects and collaborating with entrepreneurs, public transport companies, and the municipality.

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The Fruit Motor sold hundreds of bottles of their own processed, regionally branded apple juice and cider. In the afternoon, we will visit Cooperative Bommelerwaar, which was formed in June 2016 in a rural area with 50.000 inhabitants in 20 villages. Its activities are ‘multi-purpose’: anything affecting basic household needs, such as energy, food, mobility, care and housing. Bommelerwaar is member of a national cooperative network called 'Dutch Cooperative Society’. This network implements a system transition from 'shareholder value' to ‘areaholder value’ – the new way to structure the commons. You will hear about the conceptual model and visit a combined flowers and energy greenhouse.

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The cooperative is active in food, energy, water, nature, bio-based economy, health, welfare and care. Lastly, we will visit NE(X)TWORK, a group of young entrepreneurs coaching and training their peers on the skills required by new 21st-century industries in the region. Although mainly operating nationally, they aim to extend their businesses to neighboring European regions in order to share and further develop their methods.

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